rtstragedy [fae/faer, she/her]

I don’t like playing music via Jellyfin through the browser when recording cassettes (well, and in general, actually, unfortunately) since sometimes it stutters and there’s weird gaps between tracks which can destroy recordings, so I’ve been copying files locally and using Elisa (it came with KDE) when recording to cassette, but it’s buggy, plays the wrong tracks sometimes, and basically I can’t use my laptop during recording (fear of stutter) and also a notification going off would be a real problem (I don’t think messaging notifications add anything to a recording, sorry). I had an extra Pi 4 lying around, so I decided to experiment with dedicated remote controllable music player distros. (Also a dedicated player means I wouldn’t have to swap cables when I like wanted to watch a YT video)

First I tried Volumio, but I hadn’t even played a single file before I accumulated some gripes: (To be fair, my dad is a fan, so this is really just me being picky about software)

1. Long End User License Agreement that you must accept to use
2. Ublock Origin fucking lights up - apparently this local UI phones home to Facebook and Google Tag Manager, not something I want on my local network, even if I do block it, just not my ethos.
3. And finally, pushing features behind requiring an account (with multiple tiers, even!!) and a nag in the menu to that effect.

I didn’t even let it get through scanning, because I found out there’s a plausible alternative in https://moodeaudio.org/ . Looks like a frontend to MPD and a bunch of duct tape to support other stuff - I haven’t done anything with MPD so I don’t really know how to use it, but…

What I can say is that the UI is passable, maybe better than Jellyfin (and Jellyfin casting from browser to a remote device is pretty finnicky for me since Kodi/JellyCon will just disappear from the list and need a reboot, and it never really felt recording-worthy since Kodi always feels a bit finnicky to me due to various factors). Since I’m recording cassettes, there’s a limited amount of space on each side and I’m trying to jam in an entire album, so there’s a lot of “is this above 44 minutes?” checking. Luckily I can use a somewhat hidden “Queue Info” button when I’m building and it’ll show me the entire duration of the current playing queue, then I can copy it out to a playlist per side, reorder things using the kind of dialog I’d design because I’d be too lazy to implement drag and drop lol. Yeah in my browser it’s not smooth or intuitive but I fuck with this, it works, I tolerate it.

I was able to set it up to access my SMB/CIFS (w/e) share with all the music, scanning took a fuckton of time (to be fair it’s like 30k tracks and 500+GB, and over wi-fi and I’m above the garage), but there are no gaps or stutters in playback, and it detected my USB DAC just fine, so the audio quality is great. And I can disable the volume slider too (pet peeve is accidentally leaving it lowered and wondering why output is so quiet all of a sudden). So that’s pretty cool. I haven’t had a buffer underrun yet (feels inevitable since it’s grabbing files from a network share over wifi) but I’m sure it’ll happen, and it’ll ruin a recording lmao. Worst case I’ll use a USB stick since it supports local media too (and you can control buffer size in the settings too, so I guess that’s an option)

Back when I upgraded both of my LibreELEC installs to use a Pi 5 (this made such a huge difference to performance and responsiveness, even though I’m still using SD cards, and I would recommend JellyCon over the Kodi Jellyfin Plugin with Artic Zephyr Reloaded which has a main menu editor to integrate it more directly into Kodi and prevent db corruption… it’s a pain to configure, but it becomes seamless after a while, ask me about how long my 2 fucking nvidia shields lasted if you want to know why I went this route) I was thinking I didn’t really have a use for the old ones, just kept one of them and gave the rest to my dad. I finally have a use for it, so that’s pretty great.

I was originally planning on doing a headless server and using the CLI to generate playlists but honestly a UI is just better than trying to craft m3u files myself - easy to be like “ok play this directory, terminal” but not easy to be like “select exactly these 8 tracks in this order and put that into a playlist and also tell me how long the total length is and maybe i’ll add more tracks etc.” it would be a whole thing to try to script this, and I have enough silly scripts already.

edit: apparently Cantata has a pretty usable UI and I can just connect to the mpd server lol, sick, it shows cumulative durations in more places

Holy fuck I hate this stuff. You go to the house store, and you look at like 50 different options for the bottom of your door, and you realize that you need to know exactly how many atoms wide your damn front door is if you want good clearance, ok that one’s on me.

But then you see the kind you got last year and you think to yourself “that one never really worked that well and it kinda started falling apart pretty quick” so you decide to take a chance and get one that looks like it might last a bit longer. You know you’ll have to cut it to length anyway, since that’s what you do with stripping.

So you finally get around to trying to install it, it’s cold, it smells like allergies outside, and despite the fact that the base of the stripping you bought matches the depth of your door (thank fuck) AND the width appears to match too, you still have to hammer it on because it’s very tight. And since your partner is busy making breakfast because you insisted on doing this by yourself so you could “get it out of the way” you struggle. And… well, turns out it’s too wide. It’s really hard to get on, and get off, and so now you’re trying to use fucking garden shears to cut this thing to length…

Apparently, the correct tool for this is a hacksaw. Every year we do this, we forget to get a hacksaw. So I use garden shears. Random scissors. Anything but the rotary tool. I have to take it off to cut it. At this point my partner has come to help because I am clearly agitated, lol (and coffee is dripping anyway).

Okay, so despite the fact that this weather stripping is from the same brand as the previous one, the holes don’t line up. So I have to make new holes in the door. No problem… I take it off (ow btw, it was on very tight), cut it shorter, put it back on, hammer it for several minutes while making sure it doesnt slip off further in, but because I’m sitting on my ass on a tile floor I can’t get enough pressure to actually get the screws to catch. I am too stubborn and angry to put a drill bit on and try to do this right, so I kinda just grab the door handle with one hand and press with the other. It works.

Time to test. The stripping now makes the worst sound imaginable when we open the door. It is the Bad Noise. I am utterly spent today already and now I’m being goddamn triggered by my own front door.

I hate weather stripping.

Edit: OK look I framed houses for like 8 months, it was easier than this as far as finnickiness goes. Maybe next time it’s better just to get someone who actually knows what they’re doing.